Humpty is a relic of yesteryear, long since replaced by Splash Planet\u2019s attractions, but he still exists.<\/p>\n
To understand how he got inside the bush first requires an understanding of the history.<\/p>\n
Fantasyland was a theme park that formerly occupied Splash Planet\u2019s location in Hastings\u2019 Windsor Park.<\/p>\n
Humpty Dumpty during the Fantasyland glory days.<\/p>\n
Opened in 1967, the place of childhood dreams was Hawke\u2019s Bay\u2019s answer to Disneyland, with its own castle, train, and other rides and attractions that drew in crowds from around the district and country.<\/p>\n
Harry Poppelwell was its creator-in-chief. Harry was an old hand at raising money for Hastings community projects during the war years, raising money for troops overseas in his role as chairman of the Patriotic Society.<\/p>\n
In the 1950s, Poppelwell along with 12 others, formed Greater Hastings with the aim to bring brightness and joie de vivre to the region.<\/p>\n
The group instigated regional favourites like the Hastings Blossom Festival and the Hastings Highland Games.<\/p>\n
Poppelwell was installed as president of Greater Hastings and soon suggested the idea of building a special park in the district.<\/p>\n
That idea started at Windsor Park Pleasure Gardens but quickly morphed to Fantasyland \u2013 a pleasure park inspired by great European gardens through the ages and the cultural behemoth Disneyland USA.<\/p>\n
It took its name from one of the California park\u2019s theme lands.<\/p>\n
An artist’s impression of Greater Hastings’ proposals for development of Windsor Park Pleasure Gardens from 1963 as found in the booklet from Martin Popplewell’s 2002 exhibition of Fantasyland at the Hastings Art Gallery.<\/p>\n
Poppelwell travelled to both the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark and Disneyland USA, and saw first-hand the popularity and wonder of the parks. And as he told the Hawke\u2019s Bay Herald-Tribune in 1967, \u201cset the town agog\u201d with his plans to make something exciting for Hawke\u2019s Bay\u2019s children.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we as a young country cannot at this stage hope to match the elaborate set-up of either Tivoli Gardens or Disneyland, I can see no reason why we cannot produce a miniature of both,\u201d Poppelwell told the paper.<\/p>\n
The park opened on Easter weekend 1967, and the rest has been etched into the memories of Hawke\u2019s Bay residents of a certain age ever since.<\/p>\n
Fantasyland grew more run-down over its three decades of joy and was shut down in 1998 as the development of what would become Splash Planet began.<\/p>\n
The decommissioned relics of Fantasyland were collected and dumped in an area near the park and remained there for a number of years.<\/p>\n
But in 2002, Poppelwell\u2019s grandson and renowned Hawke\u2019s Bay artist Martin Poppelwell had the idea to recreate his grandfather\u2019s theme park in an exhibition at the Hastings Art Gallery, using old relics as well as building new ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was sort of a slightly maniacal sensibility to it,\u201d Martin Poppelwell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of it being in a park full of trees, it was in a gallery, darkened, and there were all these characters looking at you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Humpty Dumpty and the cheetah as they were when Martin Popplewell and Richard Brimer found them after they were dumped from Fantasyland. Photo \/ Richard Brimer<\/p>\n
Among the treasures plucked from the decommissioned ruins of Fantasyland was the well-known Humpty Dumpty statue that had asked visitors for donations.<\/p>\n
Helping Poppelwell with the exhibition was local fine art photographer Brimer.<\/p>\n
Brimer helped Poppelwell retrieve bits and pieces for the show and took photographs.<\/p>\n
Among the relics, Brimer found the park\u2019s original rocking pirate ship ride, just sitting there waiting for someone to take it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the original steel one … so many kids broke arms, legs, you know, because it had that it was totally unsafe and it was decommissioned,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw it there and thought, f***, that would look so good out the front of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Brimer\u2019s wife Susan McGruddy was less enthusiastic about losing her beautiful front garden to a death trap dressed up as a playground.<\/p>\n
Brimer also couldn\u2019t manage to find a truck and crane to help him take away the ship.<\/p>\n
So, in an opportune moment, Brimer did the next best thing and grabbed Humpty and a cheetah on his way out the door.<\/p>\n
Both are now enjoying retirement living in his garden and despite a slight colour fade and a few chips lost from their original coating, they\u2019re holding up well among the garden. <\/p>\n
But both Brimer and Poppelwell have colourful memories of spending their childhood at Fantasyland, something they feel connected to each time they walk through their garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the castle and everything, it was like going to Disneyland,\u201d said Brimer.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the castle did smell of urine for some reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poppelwell said Fantasyland was created for the right reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did have a good spirit and even though it was put together in a very Heath Robinson kind of fashion \u2013 that\u2019s what kind of made it magic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a kid, you didn\u2019t notice that Elmer Fudd\u2019s fingers pointing at the concession sign looks like a penis with a pair of balls, you didn\u2019t notice how badly Sylvester\u2019s been painted, or you don\u2019t know that Humpty Dumpty\u2019s ears are about to fall off.<\/p>\n
\u201cLong may childhood remain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Humpty is a relic of yesteryear, long since replaced by Splash Planet\u2019s attractions, but he still exists. To…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[127090,4057,14645,16651,9191,127089,3592,127087,89745,71,25282,16773,22263,42,127088,127091,22259,19133,127092,43,8143,766,99133,3790,6100,107,61,40,38,41,39,13558,6923,377],"class_list":["post-208397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-amusement","tag-behind","tag-beloved","tag-bush","tag-coastal","tag-dumpty","tag-fall","tag-fantasyland","tag-foliage","tag-from","tag-fully","tag-great","tag-happened","tag-headlines","tag-humpty","tag-intact","tag-jack","tag-looking","tag-manically","tag-news","tag-park","tag-reports","tag-riddell","tag-statue","tag-still","tag-then","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wall","tag-what","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}